The Short List

A selected guide to arts and entertainment

Updated Feb. 11, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

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Lady Gaga
Zuma Press

Lady Luck

'Born This Way,' Lady Gaga, Friday

Lady Gaga's image may be futuristic, but this weekend she'll be the focus of a good old traditional media blitz. Friday, she releases "Born This Way," the first single off a coming album of the same name. There's a promotion with Target stores. Radio stations are clearing the decks for the song about tolerance and pride, especially regarding sexuality (sample lyric: "Don't be a drag / Just be a queen"). She'll appear Sunday in a profile on "60 Minutes." Later that evening, she'll perform "Born" at the Grammy awards, where she's nominated in six categories. But can she top last year's meat dress?

Weird Clan Takes Stage

'Little Miss Sunshine,' San Diego, Tuesday-March 27

1,056

Number of people nominated for Grammy Awards this year

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Abigail Breslin
Zuma Press

The road movie (with Abigail Breslin) has found its next destination: the stage. "Little Miss Sunshine" makes its world debut as a musical this Tuesday in San Diego. Directed by Broadway veteran James Lapine, who also wrote the book, the La Jolla Playhouse production sets the dysfunctional Hoover family's trek to the finals of a kiddie beauty pageant to a score by composer/lyricist William Finn, who previously paired with Mr. Lapine on Tony Award-winning musicals "Falsettos" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."

Novelist Turned Widow

'A Widow's Story,' Joyce Carol Oates, Tuesday

In this memoir about her husband's sudden death, Joyce Carol Oates recounts relentless insomnia, hallucinations and the terrifying numbness that set in after he died unexpectedly in 2008. But flourishes of black humor punctuate the drumbeat of grief, setting the book apart from works such as Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." In an interview while she was working on the book last year, she said she aimed to avoid being "somber or sober." She describes struggling to purge her house of the "sympathy siege" of gift baskets with tasteful dark ribbons, and sorting through her late husband's financial documents, only to find that her cat, Reynard, has urinated on them.

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Rapper Eminem
Associated Press

Eminem's Big Night

Grammy Awards, CBS, Sunday, 8 p.m. Only reckless gamblers would bet against Eminem at the Grammys. The rapper's "Recovery" album was both an artistic comeback and a commercial juggernaut. With 10 nominations this year, he's a proven veteran who has yet to win in a top category. Sunday's telecast could also be the closest a Muppet will come to dropping the f-word: A crew of Henson puppets, with Gwyneth Paltrow, will back singer Cee-Lo Green on "Forget You," the sanitized version of his hit song, an unlikely contender in two of the biggest categories.

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